‘Since 2001, There Has Been a Total Decline in Law in the United States’

Philosopher Michel Terestchenko, author of “Du bon usage de la torture, ou comment les democraties justifient l’injustifiable,” (“On the Good Use of Torture or How Democracies Justify the Unjustifiable”) La Decouverte, 2008, reacts to the publication of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee report on the use of torture in secret prisons abroad by the CIA after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

What was your first reaction when you read this report which was published on Tuesday?

“It’s a terrifying finding, capable of feeding all the conspiracy theories against the CIA. From the moment that President Bush signed the memorandum of Sept. 17, 2001 — less than a week after the attacks on the World Trade Center — which authorized the CIA director to ‘use all necessary measures to capture and detain suspects who represent a continuous and serious violent threat or who plan terrorist attacks,’ the CIA acted with total impunity and unprecedented powers, without consulting the administration or the president. Either it had been tacitly authorized, or the CIA deliberately misled the Bush administration until 2003, and the president until 2006.

“We know that the United States has used torture since Vietnam. And most recently, since the 2004 revelation of the abuses committed by the army in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. What is very disturbing in this report, in addition to the appalling list of abuses, is that the CIA has never hesitated to provide false information to the White House, to various agencies and to the press. It lied about the detention conditions of the prisoners, about the interrogation techniques, about the physical effects of those methods, and about their effectiveness.”

The effectiveness of torture is, however, the argument used to defend its use …

“George W. Bush publicly acknowledged in 2006 the use of ‘alternative methods,’ justifying them a posteriori under the pretext that they would help ‘obtain important information’ and ‘save lives.’ However, there is no valid or useful information available to help foil terrorist attacks. What is very surprising is that the intelligence agencies knew that torture is ineffective and that intelligence was gathered by confrontation and analysis. In addition, we can see that the CIA used inexperienced agents in its interrogation centers.”

Can we really believe that the highest level of the American government was not aware?

“Despite the report, it seems unlikely to me that President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney or Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld were completely left in the dark about the activities that they explicitly implemented and supported at Guantanamo, in Afghanistan, or in Iraq at that time. On Feb. 7, 2002, the president also signed a directive confirming that the Taliban and the al-Qaida detainees were not protected by the Geneva Conventions relative to the treatment of prisoners of war. Despite the amount of outstanding information collected, there are still many gray areas. Only 525 pages were declassified out of the 6,000 pages of the report, and there is a specific reference to the fact that the White House refused to give the Intelligence Committee access to the more than 9,400 documents that it retains by ‘presidential privilege,’ despite repeated demands — including in 2013 — under Obama’s presidency.“

What do you conclude from this first reading?

“It is proof of the dysfunction of all channels of command and of a decline in law after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. For 13 years, all positive forms of control of democratic institutions have been disappearing, to the total apathy of citizens. Similarly, impunity, secrets, disregard for international law and ineffectiveness all are ways that describe CIA practices conducted today to eliminate jihadi through targeted strikes which are, in fact, assassinations. The U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that the results of this investigation are ‘a warning for the future,’ and that ‘the intelligence agencies must reflect about who we are as a nation.’ And that in a crisis situation, we should never challenge the laws and rules of democracy again.”